January News!

January… a new year, a new start… though I am still trying to catch up and finish last year! To catch everyone up on our last few weeks – this is what we have been up to…

The winter theme is being played with in both the 2’s and 3’s/4’s classes. The 2’s have been talking about dressing for the winter, what we know about snow, and building snowmen. We have been reading Ezra Jack Keats The Snowy Day and made pictures of ourselves dressed and playing in the snow. Some of the other books we have read were: Snowballs by Lois Ehlert, Jonathan Londan’s Froggy Gets Dressed, and Three Snow Bears by Jan Brett – to name a few.

For some of our science experiments, we have watched snow melt on the counter, watched what happens to it in the refrigerator, and we still have a full cup in the freezer! We have tried to free our polar friends from the ice… trying to figure out what melts it, and we froze water balloons to see how the liquid turns into a solid.

To round our our month in the 2’s we are reading The Mitten by Jan Brett. New Canaan Nature Center is visiting us to introduce us to some of the animals we see in the story. We will also be making bird feeders, and ice sculptures filled with treats for the birds to help feed our friends in the winter when it is harder to find food.

Miss Tina’s and Miss Eileen’s class has also been looking at winter through story, art projects and science activities. In addition to the books the 2’s have read, we have also been reading Snowmen at Night by Caralyn Buehner – look out for the story we are finishing about our snowmen who stay the night at school! Margery Cuyler’s Biggest, Best Snowman was our inspiration for the snowmen sculptures we made and the stories we wrote about them too.

We have been measuring, counting and comparing. We made the letters in our names into snowmen to see which is tallest, which name is shortest. We made mittens to talk about pairs, and to make patterns. To finish the month we will be reading about penguins and measuring ourselves against a 4 foot Emperor Penguin! In addition to the water and snow experiments we also did like our friends in the 2’s, we will be figuring out how penguins and seals stay warm in the frigid waters, and will grow our own crystals to examine under the microscope.

This rounds out our highlights of January. February is just around the corner…. and winter is that much closer to the end!

Thank you so very much for letting us be a part of your family. And as always, please let me know if you have any concerns or questions, I am happy to meet the needs of your family.